Legends
by Lady Drama
Summary: Every story has a hint of truth in it, even the legend of Natsume Hyuuga. The true story, through the eyes of the only person who knew it. NatsumeMikan with a dark twist. Complete.


**AN:** _I read a short story today about a woman who married seven times. It made me wonder how much the story would have changed had the situation been slightly different. So, here's my version. As always, I own nothing except a pair of smelly sneakers. The plot belongs to Ruskin Bond, the author of the original story. And since I definitely don't own Gakuen Alice, the characters aren't mine either._

**The first person POV in this story belongs to Mikan's son.**

* * *

><p>I was seven and curious.<p>

I questioned everything, from the colour of the sky to the necessity of drinking milk. My mother – sometimes patient, sometimes impatient – did her best to satiate my thirst for knowledge. She answered all my questions, no matter how much they exasperated her ("_Why_ do I need to eat this horrible green thing, Ma?") or embarrassed her ("How was I made, Ma?").

But on one topic she was frustratingly silent and it was the mission of my seven year old life to discover why. Any queries related to the mansion atop the hill around which our village was nestled received nothing but a stony look in response from her.

Since the day I reached the ripe old age of five and was allowed to wander freely through the hills (for we were a close-knit community and if I ever lost my way I only had to look up to see a friendly face), I went as near the supposedly haunted house as I dared. Once, at my most daring, I peeked through the fence that surrounded it. To my surprise, although the garden was overrun with weeds the house itself was still beautiful, with none of the broken windows and unearthly screams that the village legends gave it.

* * *

><p>I was seventeen and adventurous.<p>

My friends and I hatched a daring plan. On Sunday night, while our parents slept, we would gather in the school and drink cheap beer in the principal's office.

I sneaked out with only the mildest twinges of guilt to pester me. My mother was asleep and my adventure harmless.

We drank a round to our guts. We toasted ourselves, our girlfriends, our grandparents, our onions and everything else that we could think of. Finally there were just three of us left awake.

"I dare you," my friend slurred. "To break into that damned mansion."

In my clouded brain it seemed like an excellent idea and with a reckless laugh, I left school at once. I climbed up the dark country lane that I knew better than the back of my hand and encountered the fence. I frowned. With a great roar, I smashed it with my body and the rotting wood stood no chance against the hard muscle of a natural athlete. It gave way at once.

The house stood before me. It was mysterious and imposing and as I stared at it, sense began to creep into my brain. I looked at my hands and then at an old oak that had laid its roots in the soil near where I stood. A dark brown patch stained its bark, like an indelible mark of bloodshed. A cold gust of wind swept past and without really thinking, I ran back.

* * *

><p>I was twenty seven and successful.<p>

My mother, her auburn hair greyed with age, smiled as I returned to the village that had been my childhood home. I was successful in the eyes of the world now. I drove an expensive car that barely fit into the narrow lanes of my village and wore dark business suits. My mother, despite my many entreaties stubbornly refused to leave her hometown. She had been born there, she declared (in that querulous way old women have) and she would die there.

I took her for a drive, showing off, I suppose. But I wanted her to know that her pride in me was justified. That I would never leave her the way I knew my father had.

An idle thought flitted through my brain as we drove and impulsively following it, I took a turn that led us to the road that I had taken ten years ago, drunk and daring.

But before we could reach the mansion my mother's eyes widened and she screeched, "Stop! Stop this car at once!"

Startled, I slammed my foot on the breaks.

"Take me home," she said softly after a moment. "At once."

With slightly shaking hands, I complied.

* * *

><p>I was thirty seven and no longer curious.<p>

When I received the news that my mother was on her deathbed, I abandoned my meeting in New York and flew home at once. My wife and business partner assured me that she would take care of it and hurry there to join me at the first opportunity. I looked at her heavily pregnant body with concern and told her not to over-exert herself.

My mother's room in the county hospital was sterile white and I disliked it at once. The colourless room did not deserve the honour of being the final resting place of my colourful mother. She was pale and very weak but she motioned me to come closer.

"There is a story," she said, her voice the merest whisper. "That I must tell you."

I pulled up a chair next to her bed and smiled encouragingly.

"Mikan Sakura met Natsume Hyuuga when she was sixteen and he nineteen."

Shocked, I realised that she was telling me the story of the man of whom we had never spoken by mutual consent: my father.

"He was handsome as sin. Polite, rich, urbane, distant. Every woman in the neighbourhood would have died to have him. And a few did.

When he was nineteen, Mikan attended his first wedding. He married a beautiful, spoilt young socialite named Sumire Shouda who was violently in love with him. He liked the sense of security her unquestioning devotion gave him.

But within a few weeks, their marriage began to crack under the strain of widely differing ambitions. Natsume was a country man at heart, happiest while hunting in his woods or inspecting his lands. Sumire was a city girl, constantly seeking admiration and pleasure in big crowds. At first she coaxed. Then she sulked. She cried and accused him of cruelty. With each fresh outburst and each extravagant display of emotion she gave, he withdrew further from her. Finally she locked him out of his own bedroom. The proud master of the house was forced to sleep on the couch, where the servants saw him in the morning. They laughed. He was furious.

Sumire was fond of driving for miles to attend every party in the area. She often drove late into the night. People foretold that she would meet with an accident on the twisting country lanes one day but she just laughed off the opinions of us country bumpkins. One day it happened."

"An accident?"

"Almost." My mother smiled. "She drove off the edge of the mountain. She was most likely drunk but some claimed that her breaks had been tampered with."

I drew a deep breath.

"When Mikan was eighteen, she attended his second wedding. Anna Unemioya was sweet girl. She loved to bake and Natsume fell in love with her domesticity. It was a welcome relief after Sumire's loud personality.

But she was not truly sweet as saccharine is not truly sugar. She was sweet because she was weak. She had little will of her own. Natsume's strong personality completely overpowered her. Perhaps she was not so hapless by herself but around him, she let herself be dominated. He had only to raise his eyebrows and say, 'You cannot be serious' and she would instantly defer to his judgement. Playing God is a heady feeling but exhausting. Natsume grew tired.

He hated the strong feeling of guilt that seized him every time she bowed her head and gave in to him. He felt as though he were robbing her of her spirit. Three months after the marriage, he asked if he had broken her. She replied that she was not sure.

One day, while baking in her kitchen, she left the oven on too long. The house caught fire and she was unable to escape. In death, if not in life, she made a mark. Natsume never had the burnt wing of the house repaired."

My mother paused.

"Some suggested that she had turned it off."

A nurse entered the room then with her medicine. I asked her if she could wait just a little longer before sedating my mother. She smiled at me sympathetically and said that she would return soon.

"When she was twenty, Mikan Sakura attended Natsume Hyuuga's third wedding. This time he had married Nonoko, Anna's twin. They were as unlike as it was possible for twins to be. Nonoko shared Anna's romantic imagination but she also possessed a strong vein of commonsense. She was not awed by Natsume although she respected him. She was ambitious, a career woman. Natsume liked her independence.

A year after their marriage, she asked him to finance a small business venture that she wished to start. Natsume agreed. Her chemicals company was highly successful. But her plants, all located on Natsume's lands produced certain gases that harmed his land. His precious land!

She thought that he wouldn't mind. That he would see the sense of removing the farmers from his land so that she could keep playing with her chemicals. He disabused her of the notion.

She loved her chemicals too much. He loved his land too much.

They often had lunch together in various restaurants in the village. In the third year of their marriage, these outings became less frequent as they quarrelled more and more often.

One day, he took her to a small restaurant not far from where Mikan lived. She was dining there with friends. She saw them enter and noticed that Natsume's shoulders had lost the tension that had kept them stiff lately.

Halfway through the meal, Nonoko fell off her chair, unconscious. She was immediately rushed to the hospital where she was pronounced dead on arrival. Her autopsy report stated that she had inhaled certain noxious fumes while working in her laboratory and they had caused her death.

And if both the chef at the restaurant and the doctor who signed the report entered Natsume's service a few months after the incident, what of it? He had already found himself a new wife anyway.

At twenty four, Mikan witnessed his fourth marriage. Nobara Ibaragi was the daughter of a wealthy businessman, a fragile ice maiden. This time Natsume married not for love but for reasons best known to himself.

They had a rocky beginning. The bride was passionate only about her hatred for herself and her frequent bouts of self pity depressed him. Their honeymoon was cut short when she tried to kill herself by slitting her wrists. Nobara saw herself as a curse and slowly Natsume stopped reassuring her. His responses to her were mechanical for if he stared into her eyes too deeply he could he a reflection he recognised.

Natsume was afraid of her.

When she drowned herself in the village pond, no one was surprised. Even the village policeman performed only the most perfunctory investigation. The only reason he held it at all was because people were starting to talk about the strange coincidence of the fates that had befallen Natsume's various wives. However the investigation was brief because even the local law authorities did not dare go against Natsume Hyuuga."

"If she drowned, then was he..." Even before I finished my sentence, I realised that I was being naive.

"Innocent?" My mother finished my sentence. "Nobara Ibaragi could swim."

She coughed a little and I handed her a glass of water with shaking hands. She nodded her thanks.

"His fifth marriage was dubbed the wedding of the Devils. Hotaru Imai had a reputation as a ruthless, cold woman. It is likely that she married him for his money. He married her because her intelligence equalled his own genius and he could talk to her as to an equal.

But Hotaru was too much for even Natsume Hyuuga to handle.

She was always abroad on business trips and he felt neglected. Her greed was unrivalled. She wanted more and she wanted it now. She was impatient. When they fought her words were cutting and they left scars. One night she called him a murderer and reopened old wounds. She flew away without bothering to apologize.

She loved money, not him. It was a fact and as it dawned on Natsume that everyone was well aware of it, that he was the subject of much pity, he grew morose. He was sulky and despondent. He developed an inferiority complex. He felt cheated but for the first time in his life, he felt powerless to do anything about it.

There was talk that he had purchased rat poison from the village store not for the rodents in the manor but for himself.

A week later, Hotaru Imai's private helicopter crashed just as it was about to land on the manor's grounds. Oddly enough, holes were found in a vital part of the engine.

Natsume Hyuuga was accounted one of the best shots in the country."

This time when the nurse returned, her expression was disapproving. I bundled her out with all haste slammed the door of my mother's cabin shut. She muttered something about ungrateful fools and said that she was going to fetch the doctor immediately.

"You do that," I said, not even bothering to look at her.

My mother's breath was coming in short gasps now but her story was all that mattered to both of us now.

"When she was twenty eight, Mikan Sakura attended his sixth wedding. The joke running through the village that day was that Natsume Hyuuga had killed so many women he had no choice left but to marry his own kin. Aoi Hyuuga, a distant cousin on his mother's side of the family, was the bride.

Natsume never made love to her. By then, he had lost all faith in the concept of love and so he was more a brother than a lover to her. He was gentle with her, almost avuncular. After all, he had married her for companionship, not romance. It was a strange marriage but for a while, it worked. But then Aoi grew ill. Natsume was unhappy as he watched her struggle through each day. He was found crying one day, in his study after a particularly tumultuous night spent at her side in the hospital.

One day, a new nurse at the hospital made a mistake while administering an injection to Mrs. Hyuuga. She forgot to fill her syringe. The air bubble ran along the hapless girl's veins until it killed her. The nurse was too ashamed to ever admit that she had been distracted by a gossip-filled phone call from a friend and so Aoi Hyuuga's death was put down to natural causes.

"The friend knew the nurse's weakness well. The friend was Mikan Sakura."

I stared down at her in horror as I connected the dots. Could it be...?

"Mikan Sakura was the bride at Natsume Hyuuga's seventh wedding. She had comforted him for long nights after the death of Aoi. On one of those nights, you were conceived.

The day after the wedding, Natsume Hyuuga disappeared. People comforted poor Mikan Sakura and the whole village adopted her. They all helped her raise her son for it was soon evident to them that she had gotten pregnant on her wedding night."

She raised her glowing brown eyes to meet mine and said simply, "You see, Mikan Sakura wanted Natsume Hyuuga. And then, she didn't."


End file.
